


Scarred chest and broken mind

by cutebutpsyco



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ironstrange Discord Server Weekly Challenge, M/M, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Stephen Strange is a Gift, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 06:35:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17720003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutebutpsyco/pseuds/cutebutpsyco
Summary: Ironstrange Discord Server Weekly Challenge: Week #3 || Devotion.Tony loved Stephen more than he could say with words. He was the only person who could make him believe in being a hero, the only person who could make him feel worthy of others’ admiration.





	Scarred chest and broken mind

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE READ THE TAGS!**  
>  And let me know if I have to add something in the tags as well. 
> 
> That said, I didn't put it in the tags, but there's a brief mention to Wanda and Pietro and their decision to let Hydra experimenting on them. I prefer to specify at least in the notes that this might not be 100% Wanda friendly?  
> Honestly, Tony blames it on himself so maybe this warning isn't even required, but still. 
> 
> No beta-ed, nothing belongs to me.

It wasn’t easy, for neither of them. Both Stephen and Tony were persons who were used to never let the others see how they really felt. They had different reasons, but they both did that and they both tried to make the other open. It was useless, pointless, and usually ended with one of them yelling something he shouldn’t have to. 

But they loved each other, more than they could put it into words. Stephen had always been the one who did a better work with words, but it didn’t mean he was good. No, it just meant that Tony was terrible. He was good with machines, with codes and wires, with things that he could fix, when he inevitably ended up to ruin. People weren’t his thing. 

This was the reason why he tended to close himself up, to pretend nothing was wrong while he was falling apart and everything became too much. Usually, it became more and more unbearable when the anniversary of the day he woke up in a dark cave in the middle of nowhere, Afghanistan came closer. He was used to lock himself inside his lab, asking Friday to don’t let anyone in. And that day wasn’t different. 

Fifteen years ago, it seemed to be like an eternity and maybe it was, and still he couldn’t stop to see the dull walls of a cave in the middle of the desert close on himself, he couldn’t get over the feeling of the water rushing inside his lungs and the smell of dust, and sweat and blood. And still he couldn’t get over the fact that Obie tried to kill him. The man who had always been a mentor for him, towering over him, the Arc Reactor in his hand, while he was unable to do anything else that watch and hope that someone would have come. 

Yinsen’s eyes looked at him everytime he closed his own, the doctor blamed him. The doctor told him that he saved his life, and the only thing Tony could do was letting him die, running for his own life without caring about him. It wasn’t true, Tony knew that, Tony tried to save him, Tony tried to stay back and to find a way to save the first friend he had been able to made in far too long. But he couldn’t, Yinsen didn’t want his help and there was nothing Tony could do. 

_You could have done more,_ His brain suggested to him, and Tony knew that it was true. He did nothing. Despite all the promises of becoming a better man, the only thing he did after having watched the man who saved his life die, had been to kill even more people, calling himself a hero because he killed the bad guys. But he wasn’t a hero. He was someone who didn’t deserve people to look at him as their model. He was a bad person who tried to come to terms with his own conscience. His hand grasped to his aching chest. He didn’t even know anymore if it was a real pain or something that just crawled up in his mind and decided not to leave him until he would have felt how much he hurt the others.

Meeting Wanda and Pietro had been the umpteenth prove of what shouting down the arms production had been useless. It was a gesture which helped nobody but Tony himself. Because those kids’ parents died anyway, and they died because of him. And if it was true that they volunteered for Hydra, he knew there were millions of young people who had meet the same fate and did nothing. And maybe those kids were looking at him as their own hero. When he was responsible for so much destruction. 

Tony hated the person he was, the person he had been in his past, and he could understand why someone would hate him. He pretended to be a hero, but he wasn’t one. Steve was a hero; he helped the US to win the war, Stephen was a hero, even if people would never know, Peter was a hero, with his pure soul and his big, wide brown eyes. Tony was just being selfish. 

The grip on his chest become even stronger and Tony knew he was hurting himself, but the physical pain was more bearable than whatever his brain decided to make him think about. He couldn’t even breathe, but that was fine. He was used to that. What he wasn’t used to were walls starting to pushing against him. The first thing he did, once he was back from Afghanistan, was to construct all his workshops in his residences to have, at least, one glass wall, so that he could see out of it. The one in his new-old house in Malibu was entirely made of glass walls, but for the rocky one against which there were the shelves were he kept all the things he needed. 

He didn’t want to feel constricted in closed space any more, though now, walls were closing against him, leaving him nowhere to go and threatening to shatter in a billion of pieces. His hand closed even stronger against the Arc Reactor, maybe trying to rip it off, maybe trying to summon the suit, he didn’t even know. It didn’t matter in that moment. 

He could hear a voice around him, but focusing on it was difficult. The only thing he could think about was the fact that he should have been the person who died fifteen years ago, in a cave, not Yinsen, he. The doctor was a good man who lost his family and kept going on, refusing to give terrorists what they wanted. Tony was a fucked-up individual whose company sold everything to everyone just to increase his richnesses. 

He tried to straighten up his back, bent over his own legs, his right hand still against the scarred tissue of his chest, opening new wounds with the bare strength of his hand. He didn’t care. Pain was keeping him from breaking down; that was what he was repeating to himself. If he could focus only on pain, then he would have found a way to start to breathe back and then he could take care of the walls. He just needed to -

A soft and barely there hand caressed his hair, while a flash of dark blue occupied his sight field. It would have freaked him out even more, if only the movements weren’t so slow, clearly made to make him feel better. A shaking hand took his right one and placed it on his knee.  
The simple movement sent an aching pain through Tony’s body, and the genius recognized it for what it was: his muscles were tense, too tense, more than they normally should been, and it was because of the panic attack and the unnatural position he forced his arm. 

“Breathe,” Stephen whispered in the thin air between them. The Sorcerer left him all the space to eventually back off if he was towering over him or making him feel uncomfortable and Tony was glad of that. The first time that happened, during some dumb celebration in honor of his father, Stephen came too close and Tony freaked even more. He didn’t forget himself easily. He was a doctor, and those were things he should have known.  
Tony tried to do what he told, then looked at his hand. He was now grasping the void, and it was stained with blood. Tony didn’t dare to look at Stephen, but he knew the man was smiling softly, trying to make him feel better. 

It took Tony five minutes to calm enough to try to stand up, and when he did it, he almost collapsed in Stephen’s arms. The Sorcerer smiled again, and this time the genius was looking at him, seeing steel-blue eyes filled with love and worrying. With a fast movement of his wrist, he opened a portal to their shared bedroom and helped Stark walking through it. 

By now, Tony was barely responsive. He always felt like that, after a panic attack even if sometimes there was nothing he could do but play it down. Stephen never let him do that, but, on the other side, he behaved exactly the same. 

“Tank top,” Stephen said, softly, and Tony knew that he meant. He saw his own hand and knew that Stephen noticed it as well. And even if Tony couldn’t bring himself to take it off and see the mess on his chest, the old scars and the new wounds he should have procure himself, he nodded, letting his lover know that he was fine with being strip off of his tank top. 

It took Stephen a total of ten minutes to clean Tony’s chest and patches him up, before going back with his eyes on Tony’s face. It was easy to spot the exact moment when he went from doctor mode to concern boyfriend. And Tony wasn’t in the mood of another argument about his feeling. So he just shifted in the bed until he could again reach his top and tried to hide his chest under the thin fabric of it. 

Stephen’s hands stopped him without touching. Tony was glad of it. He loved being touched by Stephen, but not right now. “I’d been stupid,” Stephen said, and that was the last thing Tony was expecting for. He looked at the other man feeling his eyes widened. 

“What…? I... “ 

Stephen shook his head “I should have stayed with you, today,” He must have seen something on Tony’s face. The genius couldn’t even imagine what he saw. His muscles were burning, but what was really hurting was his chest. He didn’t even realize it, before, but pushing against the Arc Reactor made old wounds to come back to bother him. And those, as well as the ones in his mind, weren’t going to leave soon. “Does it hurt?”

Tony knew lying, by now, was pointless, but it didn’t mean that he had to say it loud, so he just nodded, lowering his eyes a moment later. It was his fault, that was for sure, because he wasn’t even able to bear with his past mistakes. Though Stephen was still there, and Tony couldn’t really help himself, but the only thing he wanted was a confirmation that he wouldn’t have walked away if he showed his weaknesses. 

Strange nodded once, then, oh-so-slow, bent over the bed, pushing his lips against Tony’s chest, now shielded by his eyes thanks to the top. He backed off a moment later, eyes still locked with Tony’s. The engineer nodded, and Stephen placed another kiss on his chest, purposely avoiding the new wounds. Neither of those were deep enough to leave a scar, but they were painful anyway. 

“I’m sorry, Tony,” He whispered, and that was enough for another wave of guilt to build up in Tony.

“Don’t…” He let out, and Stephen nodded, letting him slowly rise the fabric what was enough to show his scarred chest. Tony knew Stephen loved to kiss his bare skin there, because it was his way to remind Tony he had an enormous heart or something like that, and his boyfriend was the only person he would have shown the entirety of his scars. “I’m a mess. I shouldn’t been surprised by it, by now.”

Stephen kissed another spot on his tanned skin. It was stupid, but he felt like the pain started to leave his chest. Maybe Stephen was using his magic to do it, even if Tony was sure that he would ever use his magic on him without asking for permission. “Hey,” He said, his goatee was tingling against his bare skin softly while he spoke. “Maybe we can be messes together, because you perfectly know how fucked up I am.”

And that, at least, made Tony chuckle. “God,” He said, popping himself on his elbow so that he could look straight at Stephen. “I love you.”

The glance Stephen let fall on him spoke of love, devotion and promises. “I love you too, Tony, more than everything else.”

The next kiss Stephen placed on Tony was against his lips because the older man put a hand between his hair and dragged him up so that he was facing him. Tony loved Stephen more than he could say with words. He was the only person who could make him believe in being a hero, the only person who could make him feel worthy of others’ admiration. 

And with Stephen’s lips against his chest, also his scars didn’t look so ugly.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are my life and make me want to write more, so please, let me know what to think about this fic. 
> 
> **ideas? requests? want to say 'hi'?** [find me on tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ironstrange-is-the-endgame).


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